`serenade of 500 rascals with vile fiddles and rebecks'; that
singing, `in bad accord,' of Protestant psalms by the wet crowd
beneath the palace windows, while the fires on Arthur's Seat shot
flickering gleams of welcome through the dreary fog. What a lullaby
for poor Mary, half Frenchwoman and all Papist!

It is but just to remember the `indefatigable and undissuadable'
John Knox's statement, `the melody lyked her weill, and she willed
the same to be continewed some nightis after.' For my part,
however, I distrust John Knox's musical feeling, and incline
sympathetically to the Sieur de Brantome's account, with its `vile
fiddles' and `discordant psalms,' although his judgment was
doubtless a good deal depressed by what he called the si grand
brouillard that so dampened the spirits of Mary's French retinue.

Ah well, I was obliged to remember, in order to be reasonably happy
myself, that Mary had a gay heart, after all; that she was but
nineteen; that, though already a widow, she did not mourn her young
husband as one who could not be comforted; and that she must soon
have been furnished with merrier music than the psalms, for another
of the sour comments of the time is, `Our Queen weareth the dule
[weeds], but she can dance daily, dule and all!'

These were my thoughts as we drove through invisible streets in the
Edinburgh haar, turned into what proved next day to be a Crescent,
and drew up to an invisible house with a visible number 22 gleaming
over a door which gaslight transformed into a probability. We
alighted, and though we could scarcely see the driver's outstretched
hand, he was quite able to discern a half-crown, and demanded three
shillings.